straightforwardly
by finaljoy
Summary: Matt always believed God had a plan, he just wondered where a blind man fit into a world defined by color. Claire didn't mind having a soulmate, she just resented the culture. Things become complicated when she fishes Matt out of a dumpster and he not only makes her see color, but also happens to be blind. Which means he has no idea they're soulmates. (colorblind!soulmates au)
1. one

AN _I know. I shouldn't be writing YET ANOTHER Clairedevil fic. But the idea was too beautiful and tempting to say no to, so here we are._

 _Much love to my betas, Red Bess Rackham and ThatGypsyWriter._

* * *

"Sonnet XVII, I Do Not Love You..."

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,  
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.  
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms  
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;  
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,  
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.  
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;  
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,  
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,  
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

* * *

Matt had always been confident that God had a plan and that everything happened for a reason. Even as a child, he knew in his soul God would see things set to rights. Even after the accident, he believed.

But it was still hard not to wonder where a blind man fit in a world where soulmates were identified by seeing color.

At first, as a kid, Matt had worried about other things. There were bills, his father losing fights, learning to do everything without sight. Then some kid at school had raised the question. It was innocent enough, astute in that blunt way little kids had.

 _How're you gonna find a soulmate when you can't even see?_

He didn't have an answer all recess. He didn't have an answer all week.

He didn't have an answer.

Matt was obsessive about researching it. Instead of loving trains or insects, Matt grabbed every book he could find, asked every adult, demanded every question. It didn't matter that no one had his illusive answer. It had become habit by then. He spent his time reading Thurgood Marshall and ferreting out stories of atypical soulmates. He craved accounts of nuns seeing rainbows after they committed themselves to God, of kids who saw color after adopting a puppy, of old men whose color lost most of its vibrancy after their wives died, only to regain its intensity when they start dating again. He didn't care about answers any more. He needed _differences,_ because he'd figured it out quick; he'd never see. Not his father's face, not his own hands, not the reportedly worn hues of his street. He'd always be different, a third option in a world that was strictly binary. All that mattered was that he wasn't the only one.

He felt better when he met Stick. Stick didn't give a raging damn about color. He didn't give a damn about anything, other than the war.

(maybe that was what happened when you knew you'd never see your soulmate, matt thought. he resolved to meet another blind person to verify.)

He liked being with Stick because then he had _purpose._ Everything outside of training was about _soulmates._ Products were sold to simulate color, agencies catered in finding soulmates, magazines dictated how to be happy when life with a soulmate wasn't perfect. Everything was about something Matt could not have.

So he didn't go outside of training. He ran for as long and as hard as Stick said, he practiced kicks and punches until he could barely breathe, he absorbed every blow and pain because he was worth something if he did.

Not enough to get Stick to stay, but Matt never needed a soulmate, anyway. He would be fine alone. Better off, probably.

* * *

Claire didn't really care about seeing color. She figured it would happen or it wouldn't, there was no need to freak out over it (sadly, she was a minority in that respect). She honestly hated the hype and verve over finding a soulmate, the perverse pity and judgement placed on those that hadn't found their 'one-and-only' before thirty-five. It might have been the early, radical stages of her flipping off society, but hearing people freak out about soulmates made Claire's stomach squirm. Why was _that_ the only important thing in some people's lives? What about careers, ground breaking discoveries, giving back to society? What about the _sky_ opening up, about people having special powers, about the world going mad? Why did so much come down to finding that one special person in a planet of a few good billion?

She was fine dating people because they made her happy and not because they dyed her world by just existing. And yes, it had caused her heart to be broken far more than the average person, she admitted that. She was fine being achromic, one of those crazy people that trusted their feelings more than their eyes. After all, soulmate didn't mean ' _romantic partner'._ She'd known people whose soulmates were siblings, who bonded with people who spoke a foreign language, who connected with someone who could have been their grandchild. Life wasn't a simple flow chart with only two options; see color and get married and have bliss, or never see color and remain alone and miserable forever. _Everything_ was too complex for that.

It didn't mean she never thought about her soulmate. It didn't mean she would flat out refuse to marry them if they ever did arrive. It just meant she explored her options (and trusted her own brain and good sense over 'what was supposed to happen').

Her family wasn't exactly psyched about this. Her mother fully acknowledged she could settle down with someone who didn't show her the vibrancy of a sunset or the honest crispness of the sea, but still. She thought sixteen was a _bit_ too young for declarations of being achromic. Claire had never agreed until she found out that her boyfriend of six months had been cheating on her ever since a barista made him see the warm, muted colors of cinnamon rolls and cappuccinos.

Hurt like that couldn't be reasonable, not when people would continually choose color over black and white. But being alone and miserable couldn't be reasonable, either. Not when it was dictated by a quirk of fate and DNA.

Claire kept dating people even though her world was firmly grey. Her sister, Maribel, told her it was noble, it was brave, it was special (maribel was also pushing on forty and hadn't found her soulmate yet. she was _also_ married with two kids and had a soulmate clause in her pre-nup that said if one of their soulmates ever _did_ show up, the divorce would be quick and painless. claire thought this was a horrible idea). Even that made Claire grit her teeth. _Why_ was existing, connecting, and interacting with people who _weren't_ your soulmate so damn surprising? Why couldn't she be with just people _?_

She got over most of her angst by the time she got into college. It was stupid and aggravating, yes, but soulmate culture wasn't going to change. So she kept going, content with her shades of grey world view and her achromic relationships and resigned to the fact that she would be fighting these ideas until the day she was dead in the ground.

(a part of her hoped things would be easier when she finally did meet her soulmate. a tiny, tiny, tired part of her.)

* * *

Matt always considered Stick to be a direct cause for his vigilantism. Without his training, Matt would be nothing more than a blind man. Without his philosophy, he would be adrift. He learned his purpose was to fight, day after day after day. Stick's reason to keep fighting was 'the war' (whatever the hell that was), but Matt's was to keep people safe. The world was filled with filth and chaos. It predated aliens screaming down and causing havoc, even predated people who were 'special'. Things had always been corrupt and terrible. Matt just hoped he could stem the tide, a little, a bit, enough to make one life better.

And it felt good. No one tiptoed around his probably never finding a soulmate when he was breaking their teeth with his elbow. No one was guilty about having a soulmate when he was breaking their hands. No one pitied him because he was _blind._

He went to confessional for that. Pride, the killer of souls, it needed to be ousted like the crime that saturated his city. And wrath, he supposed. There was too much wrath when he bruised his fists on men's bloody faces.

He imagined his sins poured out across the chapel floor on bad days, black and thick and sticking to the walls. There was something disgustingly poetic about that being one of the only colors everyone could see.

Father Lantom never criticized, though, fine man of God that he was. He simply offered advice, a hand on the shoulder, and the casual comment of _perhaps life isn't just purpose or color, Matthew._

Matt was a little rattled by that, but he pushed it away. It was different for Lantom. He had both, he could say whatever he wanted. His reason to be was to guide people back to the fold, and he had the solid, earth pallet brought out by his best friend's smile (as he had told matt once, because he championed honesty flowing both ways).

Matt sometimes wished _his_ best friend was his soulmate. Things would have been better, he felt, if Foggy had met him and suddenly saw what color his hair was, what shade his eyes were. At first, in college, Matt had been _so close_ to believing he'd done it, he'd found them, he'd found his soulmate. The thought made him deliriously happy for a few seconds before reason caught up. Foggy would have told him if they were soulmates.

But he still hoped, thinking maybe, maybe, each day fading the fear a little further. Things felt so _right_ with him, the Nelson clan was basically Matt's second skin. It had taken two years and half a bottle of shared illicit booze before Matt asked the question.

Foggy was quiet for a long time, his heartbeat speeding up enough to make Matt break into a sweat.

"I've always been able to see color," he said. The whiskey in his stomach probably helped get the words out, if their nervous, whispered quality meant anything. "Ever since I was a kid."

"You…what? You've…already found your soulmate?" Matt made himself smile, made himself try to not sound like he was choking. Of _course_ Foggy wasn't his soulmate. Who could be paired with Matt, born unlucky and then rendered blind? Not even fate could be that cruel.

Foggy cleared his throat, still nervous. "I…no. Not really. At least…I guess that's a possibility, the nurse delivering me might have been my soulmate or something, but I…have always been able to see in color. Earliest memories are full of it."

Matt focused on breathing for a few seconds, his face hot. Foggy had always been able to see in color? That didn't make sense. In all of the hours and days and years of research Matt had done as a kid, he had never heard of someone being _born_ with the ability to see color. Even after, that anomaly had never crept up on his radar. But…if there _was_ someone in the universe who had that gift, if there was someone who had simply been born loving the world with all their might, wouldn't it have been Foggy Nelson?

It was probably some cosmic joke, Matt thought after a moment. There was no other way to explain why a man who would never be able to see anything was rooming with a man who had always been able to see everything.

"Does that—does that bother you?" Foggy asked.

"Why would it?" Matt asked, the smile feeling so false on his lips.

Foggy sighed. His words were blunted by alcohol when he spoke. "Because of some weird idea that I'm only friends with you out of pity."

The words stung, but not because Matt had thought of them. It was mostly centered on Matt's hollow fear that maybe _everyone_ was friends with him out of pity.

"Because I'm not, Matt." Foggy shifted forward on his bed, his breath coming faster as he spoke. "I swear to you, I'm not. I just—you're an awesome guy, you know that? And I know a lot of people freak out about soulmates and base all their relationships on that, but that's never been an issue for me. So know that I mean it, deep down from my cast iron Irish gut that I'm friends with you because I'm _happy_ being your friend."

Matt huffed out a laugh. All he could hear was Foggy's heartbeat, fast and nervous and without even the trace of a lie.

Then Foggy, in all his selfless goodness, said, "And hey, if you need me to get people off your back, I can totally say that I am your SM. We'll con the world, make everyone think I'm new to seeing teal and yellow and vermillion or something. I'll even marry you, if you wanna make it _really_ good."

"Vermillion? Is that even a _color_?" Matt laughed, because he had learned jokes were the best diversion tactic. It certainly helped him justify the tightness in his throat.

"Totally is. Or…maybe that's tortillion?"

" _Definitely_ not."

Foggy hadn't been lying just there, either. If it meant helping him, making Matt happy…Foggy would have done it.

That night, just as they were going to sleep, Matt asked another question.

"Why didn't you lie?"

Foggy was quiet again, processing through the haze of smuggled whiskey. "Because there's no point in lying, y'know? Like…say I did lie. And it's great. But ten years later, I slip up, mention that my favorite toy as a kid was orange. Then what? Tell you I lied? Lie again? That's too serious to hide, for any reason."

(matt heard the unspoken 'and it'd just hurt you more' in the pause between sentences.)

Matt grinned and made some flippant comment. A part of him wanted to tell the truth, wanted to whisper that he could hear heartbeats and smell the smuggled pizza bites down the hall and feel the pressure change when the front door opened and closed three floors down. He wanted to tell Foggy that he hadn't been right ever since the accident, to tell him he was some kind of freak.

But that felt a little more unwieldy than Foggy's secret, a little riskier to tell. And, if they kept up talking about important things, Matt knew he would probably have a complete meltdown. The whiskey was bubbling all his emotions to the surface, and he did _not_ need that embarrassment piled on top of everything else.

That was why Matt cried after Foggy went to sleep. That was absolutely why. And maybe also because he was fervently thanking God for placing Foggy Nelson in his life.

* * *

Claire didn't know _what_ she was doing when she helped Santino haul the man from the dumpster. She knew about the vigilante (how the hell could she _not?_ ), and she knew she was carting trouble to her front step and throwing the door wide. But what was she _doing?_ He smelled like garbage and looked like he'd just been curb stomped. Damn that oath to help all men. Of course it had to apply to those who broke the law.

(not that she was _too_ upset about it. she did kind of agree with his actions. a little.)

Things became more complicated the longer he was in her apartment. First, he was half dead. Then he was aggressive and resistant to hospitals. Finally, she realized that the gloves on her hands, the seams of his shirt, and the dark, dark blood on his face, arms, side…everywhere, really, were all changing. They weren't just shades of grey.

Red. She was seeing red.

Claire wasn't sure what pissed her off more: the fact that this _whack job_ was making her see color, or the fact that her only frame of reference for color came from medical textbooks (bright red meant high oxygen saturation. his blood was not bright red. it was dark and terrifying). Of course the biggest, scariest moment in her whole life was stomped on by science.

Shit. She was seeing red. _Shit,_ she was seeing in color. The man she was now trying to heave onto her couch, the man she had _literally_ fished from the garbage five minutes ago, was her soulmate.

 _Shit._

It really didn't help that, twenty minutes later, she discovered that he was well and truly blind (no). Which meant he was one of those crazy super powered people ( _no)._ Which meant he did not know they were soulmates (oh _hell_ no).

Then her stomach sank as she listened to Mike's story of child trafficking and Russians. Blind, yes. Crazy, _yes._ Super human, yes. But he was also a very good man.

Claire made herself stop thinking about it when he rifled through her drawers and promised to knife fight the Russian pretending to be a cop outside. That was probably a good call when Mike then knocked him unconscious and tortured him for information.

He was a good man (and her soulmate), he was doing this for a good reason (she had to back him up, right?), a child's life was at stake (she wouldn't be bound to a _real_ lunatic, surely).

But she wasn't thinking about this.

Claire managed to keep up her mantra while she went to her friend's place, while she patched Mike up, while he told her the kid was safe. But after, after she locked the door and turned off the lights and went to bed, Claire burst into tears.


	2. two

_AN So if you thought the last chapter was super self-indulgent, know this one is about fifty times worse._

* * *

Matt explained his stiffness to Karen and Foggy by saying he'd slept weird the night before. They swallowed the lie (no one would think it was because of two cracked ribs), and he went about his day.

Claire kept buzzing through his head. She knew. She knew and she had helped him. She knew and he had…an ally?

The thought was almost too good to believe. He'd been alone for a long time, hiding bits and pieces of himself from everyone. And yes, Claire didn't know his name or who he was or why he was a vigilante, but she knew an important part of him. That way, if he rounded every part out, someone knew every bit of him. And comprehension was _kind_ of close to compatibility.

(not that he _needed_ anyone to exist, anyway.)

Matt liked to think that, had he been able to see, he would be able to see in color. His love for the flawed, difficult, beauty of Manhattan was part of him, as close to the bond of a soulmate as one could probably get. He hadn't always felt that way, but it was nice to think he had bonded with a place instead of a person.

That was also why he fought crime in a mask. He loved his city more than anything in his life, he couldn't let it suffer because it was rotting from within. He loved the people, the streets, the smell of garbage, and the air off the Hudson. The city was always alive, singing a changing song with every breath. If it cost him a good night's sleep, a few bloodied knuckles, and his physical safety, well, that was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He _loved_ his city.

Matt let it wash over him on his walk to work, in the quiet moments at night, on lunch breaks. He sometimes took off his glasses and just absorbed the city around him, pretend that the darkness that swallowed him up was because of his closed eyelids, not damaged eyes. Every horn and tree and gust of wind and cart of food was a medley he'd been learning since—

Lemons.

Matt flinched, the sharp brightness of lemon bars flooding his mouth. But…he hadn't been eating _anything_ remotely citrus-y. He'd been eating a _P_ _olish sausage._ He frowned, sorting through the myriad of flavors. Beef, onions with too much canola oil, cooked mushrooms that were a little old, relish that had been sitting in the container too long and had an aftertaste of plastic, the dust from the vendor's gloves, the vague taste of Matt's own sweat from his hands—

Lemons.

Matt sat a little straighter. _Why_ was he tasting lemons? This wasn't like when his sense normally acted up. _Normally,_ they registered _everything,_ each touch, taste, and smell too intense for his brain to filter out. But now it wasn't that his body was refusing to screen certain stimulus, it was that it was sensing ones that weren't even there.

Maybe he was tasting it in the air? Matt sifted through the options, setting aside the cologne, the wet dog, the sausages, the gasoline, the cigarette smoke, the lotion of the woman standing at the food cart…

The woman shifted, making her skirt swish in the air. Again, lemon bars, bright and sour undercut by sweetness.

It had to be her, it had to be her perfume or something in her bag or—or— _something._

Matt slipped his glasses back onto his face and hurriedly left the bench he was sitting on. He needed to get back to the office.

(he tried to ignore the fact that the woman didn't smell remotely like lemon bars. he also tried to ignore the fact that he tasted them again after he went to bed.)

* * *

Claire could see color. Slowly, the hues faded in over the greys and blacks and whites. She was surprised at how _many_ there were. Things she had previously considered white revealed themselves to be soft gentle pastels or gaudy, over saturated things. The biggest surprises were the things she had assumed were a dull, dark grey turning into stunning jewel tones or hideous, disgusting looking colors (perhaps this was why all clothes came with labels saying what color they were).

First, she had only been able to see red, but eventually blue crept in. She stared at the apartment, confused and afraid and amazed at every new shade. The work gloves she had initially thought a dull pink morphed into purple, charming and pleasant against the harsh red of Mike's blood. Then more colors arrived, combining in ways she hadn't thought possible.

Claire spent the empty hours searching for color names, scraping through her memory for 'brown', 'orange', 'jade', 'violet'. She couldn't see colors, but each passing day brought a few more. In one meeting, her whole life had been redefined. All because of one person. She wasn't sure she was comfortable with that. But she had no choice.

Mike came by whenever he needed help, bringing in a fresh flock of colors with him each time. Browns gained thousands of undertones, yellow had hundreds of variations, white and off white and near white and cream all made their own separate sense. Even predictable, uniform grey changed, gaining dozens of various hues she had never even hoped to imagine.

(the cat, she was grimly pleased to note, was an ugly shade of dirt black.)

Mike was his own form of palette. The yellow-green bruise on his mouth differed from the pale cream of his skin, the white of his teeth was bright against his rose mouth, the coffee-ground shadow of his scruff was duller than the slight bags under his eyes.

He also proved to have a million colors to his mind. Mike wasn't just the edgy, feral warrior that heard heartbeats and threw people off roofs. He was quiet, tired, and patient as she applied Vaseline and gauze. She'd noticed his wryness before, but it morphed into a humor that was clever and deprecating in a way she didn't understand.

Claire didn't understand a lot about him. He hid his life and his real name from her, but showed his wounds and exhaustion. He could be brutal, but also so, so gentle. She'd noticed it after she'd told him her name, his hand dumbly reaching out for hers as he whispered thank you. He confused and intrigued her with every step.

Maybe that was why she didn't tell him about the colors; she was too scared to seal her fate with someone so adamant on getting themselves hurt (her stance on him being a madman had scaled back from 'full on insanity' to 'crazy but with his heart in the right place'). But she let him keep coming back because he charmed her in a way no masked man ever should.

What could it hurt, though, if she was being honest? At least they would be confused about their awkward reality together. Yet Claire knew confessing would make things real. She had time to wrestle a few more answers out of herself before she committed to something so huge. Mike wasn't about to disappear, she knew that (hoped that, because it would probably mean his death). She had time.

After a couple of days, she left the apartment and the demon cat to go to the Museum of Modern Art. She was nervous, more because of the meaning behind the action than the threat of gangsters grabbing her in the street. Claire's palms were sweating and her heart was deafening in her ears, but she pushed through the front doors all the same.

Claire paid for her ticket, shifting slightly as her eyes sought out the bright signs.

"First time in the museum?" the girl behind the desk asked.

"Uh, yeah. No need to go before, I couldn't really see…" The rest of the sentence caught in her throat as her words processed. It had been so easy to say it, like she was totally fine with having a soulmate. Which she was. Soulmates in general: awesome. Mike the Masked Man as her soulmate: less awesome.

The girl nodded in soft understanding. "Congratulations," she said, a sweet smile on her face.

"Uhm, thanks. No much I _did_ , I just met him and…biology, I guess."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Congratulations on seeing the art as it was intended."

Claire swallowed, blinking as the girl took out a pen and began marking a map of the museum.

"Here," she said. "Follow the arrow for the best walk through. You just started seeing color, right? Then this should be great. You'll start out slow, but the end is worth it. The Picasso exhibit actually made me weep."

Claire stared at her, fumbling for a response. That had been the kindest, most un-deterministic view of finding a soulmate she had ever encountered. The only thing she could think of between her surprise and the harsh, strange shapes of cubism was to say thank you and follow the map as instructed.

Claire wound through the galleries, perusing the clean marble statues and dark charcoal sketches at the beginning of the tour. With the map in hand, it was obvious that the museum had a special order to it. Color slowly bled into the galleries, abstract art and still lifes fading from grey to everything else. She was amazed at the different _uses_ of color, how some paintings looked muddied while others were so delicate and crisp that she thought the paint might disappear if she stared too hard.

She passed the classic masters, Raphael and Botticelli and Jan van Eyck, amazed at the differences they displayed. Then she found Van Gogh. She'd heard about him, his name one of many that hadn't mattered until a few days ago. But seeing his paintings in real life, in vibrant, powerful, liberating color left her breathless.

Yellow and blue and red all tumbled together, the brushstrokes blunt and beautiful in their honesty. She hadn't understood just how _important_ every single color was, even as more and more had stood out to her over the passing days. Irises and hay bales and bedrooms paraded before her, shot through with sunflower after sunflower after melancholy sunflower.

Claire blinked hard, hand rising to her mouth as tears fell to the floor. There were not words to explain what she was feeling—a confused, amazed, awestruck jumble of wonder. She swallowed, eyes falling to an info plaque. She skimmed it, buying herself time until she could look back at the paintings.

 _"The Night Café" is commonly believed to have been painted to emulate Van Gogh's previous inability to see color, as well as doubling as a study on the emotions elicited by color schemes._

Claire laughed out loud, her hand pressing hard against her mouth as more tears trailed down her cheeks. People genuinely thought he didn't intend every single color on the canvas, the garish red and sickly green and thin, sad yellow? How could he have not? How could he willingly waste the opportunity and ability to change worlds with a simple choice of paint?

Claire clasped her hands together and sighed out a slow breath. She tried not to buy into the myth and fantasy that surrounded soulmates, but if Mike could feel what she was feeling, if they had some tenuous thread between them, some silken bit of consciousness that bound them to each other…

She closed her eyes, praying he could see the paintings through her.

* * *

His body had turned against him. Stick had taught Matt, had trained him, had drilled into every particle of his being that his body was a weapon only he could control. Every reaction, every response was manageable, and it was Matt's fault if he didn't handle it. And he had—he had until it had become a point of rare and excusable pride.

And now it was beyond control.

First, he tasted lemon bars, the simple brightness of the flavor springing through his whole mouth. Then it started happening more and more, different tastes and even smells stumbling into him for no reason at all. The taste of honey, the smell of mint or dirt or cotton or bubble gum, it didn't matter where he was or what he was doing, his senses insisted on identifying things that were not there.

He tried to fight it. Matt went on a fast for a couple of days, hoping that his body simply needed a reset. Maybe he needed to go back to basics and eat only organic whole foods, maybe he had to clean his whole apartment to chase away the smells that defied reason.

He did all that. But it wasn't just about what he ate or how he lived, he knew that from the beginning.

A part of him wanted to tell Foggy, but then he would have to explain things were _not right_ with him in the first place. He thought about telling Claire, but that repelled him, too. Something in his gut constricted at the thought of appearing fundamentally broken to her.

He could be hurt, certainly, he could be battered and bleeding beyond all reason. That was something he could walk off. He got back up like Murdocks always did, he withstood the broken bones and lacerations and miles and miles of bruises. That wasn't permanent. But as the days and weeks moved on, as he smelled mousse in filthy alleyways and tasted cut grass as he slammed his knees and elbows and confusion and rage into men's bodies...

 _This_ was probably permanent. Knowing Matt's luck, he would always be haunted by these ghosts he could never understand.

That was fine. He was fine. He had no place to doubt God's will, he could not compromise his battle against the monsters in Hell's Kitchen because things had gone a little differently than expected. And, as unsettling as losing control of his body was, there was some good to it.

Sometimes, when he was around Claire, when she was in front of him just so…he would smell roses. Even though she smelled like the forbidden fruit, dark and enticing and sweet, she would cause him to smell something light and lovely. Sometimes it was paired with the earthy smell of coffee as she swished her hair off her neck, or maybe a wider array of clean, simple tastes (pears, linen, paper, chalk), but always there were roses.

That calmed him. In a world suddenly undulating with stimulus he couldn't hope to understand, Claire always smelled like roses. She was his consistency.

Which was ridiculous. She was a stranger who was hiding in a friend's apartment until he figured out how to stop the Russians from targeting her. But she had been reliable so far, with her rose smell and rolls of bandages and sarcasm-covered-concern. Matt wasn't about to label her an angel of comfort, compassion, or anything, really, but there _was_ something divine in her unrelenting care for him. Time after time, her steady, rose water hands sewed together skin and wiped away lemon bar blood—

Lemon bars. The presence of his blood made him taste lemon bars? No, that couldn't be, he'd first tasted them when he'd been sitting on a bench, when he'd been totally fine (save two cracked ribs, a jammed finger, and plenty of bruises). But he _also_ tasted them nearly every night after returning home from clearing the streets, lemon bars mingling with copper and sweat and grime.

Why would he taste it now? He focused, training his senses on the tired pile of blooded cotton swabs and gauze. No lemon. He turned his head, holding his breath as he faced the pile, waiting—

Lemon bars.

Matt stiffened. He gave a quick answer to her question ( _by 'come by', do you mean 'stumble in, bleeding half to death'?_ ), turning his face away. Then he turned back. Nothing. He moved his eyes—

Lemon bars.

He fought hard not to suck in a breath but failed. No, that—it would be ridiculous— _arrogant,_ even, to assume…

Matt swallowed. He had to focus on the task at hand. He put on his shirt and told Claire about Wilson Fisk. Fisk, a nagging clue to the puzzle he was kicking around, the man that didn't exist, who struck horrifying fear in his subordinates. But as he took back the burner phone, he flicked his eyes to where he thought her face was. He smelled roses.

His heart thudded hard in his chest, a strange mix of hope and panic making it hard to breathe. He left the apartment fast, hands almost shaking from shock. He only tasted or smelled things when his eyes focused on something. That meant—

No, _no,_ he was leaping to insane conclusions. There was no way _he…_ not with Claire, not with someone so good.

He spent the next few days researching. He retraced the paths he had worn as a child, seeking answers that had stopped being important to him. How could someone find their soulmate without being able to see? He skimmed articles and personal accounts, seeking confirmation just as much as denial.

(either one terrified the absolute hell out of him.)

It was stupid, it was selfish, it was _dangerous,_ but everything else became less important. Pursuing the Russians fell to the side, helping Mrs. Cardenas was negligible, keeping the streets safe didn't seem as vital. Everything he knew, everything he felt confident enough to believe (he would never find a soulmate on his own) (he would probably always be alone) (he had been blinded to keep from burdening his soulmate with his sinner hands) was now false.

How could he have _never_ heard of this? Tasting and smelling colors in place of seeing them, that was impossible. Would he have been able to do this even if he _could_ see? Would his life have stayed monotone, shot through with disorienting bits of scent and flavor?

Then finally, tucked away in some unassuming corner of the internet—

 _Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which the stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway. Synesthesia has increasingly been connected to non-visual identification of soulmates._

Matt stopped his reader, hands shaking as he sat back. So there was his answer. God _had_ laid aside a miracle for the blind in a world defined by color.

He let out a laugh, hardly surprised when it turned into a sob.

* * *

 _AN Yeah so if any of you caught it I was totally giving a nod to '_ Rescue Flare' _by_ lazarov, _via_ _mention of Matt's senses 'normally acting up'. Legitimately one of the best Daredevil fics I've ever read. Just...go soak your brain in that bad boy right now, you can thank me later._


	3. three

_AN Thank you all for the lovely response this has received! This story is just fantastic and lets me hash out all of the Clairedevil pain I have in my heart :'D_

* * *

Seeing color was a kick in the teeth when it showed Claire the red of her own blood on a baseball bat.

She was terrified out of her mind, desperate to escape the mobsters before her, _needing_ Mike to come save her. She knew he would if he got her call, or at least he'd _try._ What good were super senses when she was already in hell?

Claire panted that she didn't know, she didn't _know_ what the vigilante's name was. Then she was screaming as the asshole before her slammed the bat into the cab window over her head. She sobbed as glass scattered into her hair, sickly thankful for the little cuts the glass gave her since it wasn't more of the bat. She had sailed past 'this can't be real' and plunged straight into 'when will it end'. Reason and terror and basic impracticality fought against each other, all shot through with _maybe he'll know where you are._

Which was stupid. _Stupid stupid stupid._ The magical power of love wasn't going to save her. It just rendered her torture in glorious technicolor.

And then the lights went off. And then one of the Russians disappeared. And then Claire knew she had been right.

That was why she laughed. Not because she was certain that Mike was going to save her, not because those sons of bitches were about to have holy hellfire rain down on them. It was because she knew all about the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, and, soulmates or not, she was ready to help him do his vicious work.

She slid off her chair, flinching away from the noise and danger of gunshots. She felt Mike flitting through the shadows, disabling the Russians with brutal efficiency.

Claire forced her hands over her feet, the duct tape pulling and tearing at the skin on her wrists. She fought to get her breath under control as she pressed her legs tight against her chest, but the cuts on her back were too much, her ribs burned, she was going to vomit, she couldn't do this, she couldn't do this—no, she _had_ to do this. If she wanted to get out alive, she had to do her part and not be a useless fucking damsel in distress.

She gasped as her hands jerked free.

 _Thank you, God, thank you,_ she thought, offering up her first sincere prayer in who knew how long. She tore at the tape around her ankles and began crawling away, scrabbling to safety in—

A hand grabbed her around the waist, accompanied by that damn Russian accent. She struggled against him, but his arm around her ribs was shooting fire through her chest as something broken protested at the pressure. She couldn't even force out a whimper.

"Let her go." Mike's voice was too calm for a growl, but Claire could hear the devil in it.

" _I'll blow her brains out!_ " the Russian shouted, jolting her again. Claire let out a scream of pain and terror, wordlessly begging Mike to save her, to do something, to get her out of there.

It took a handful of seconds. One moment she was being smothered by agony and the man's arm, and then Mike was there, slamming blow and after blow into her captor's body.

Claire staggered away, hands reaching for the baseball bat even as she almost tripped on it. She picked it up, every part of her body shrieking in protest.

She didn't know why she hit the man in the face (out of vengeance) (to finish the fight) (to stop Mike from being so _brutal_ ), but it left her feeling sick. Violence felt so _wrong._ Forget her being a nurse and her damn Hippocratic oath, hurting someone after what she had gone through…

She pressed her hands against her mouth, body caving in on the sobs she couldn't yet voice. All of it…all of it was just too much.

Mike pulled her into a hug, somehow gentle after the fight.

"It's okay," he whispered, carefully setting his hands against her. Claire flinched away, wanting to lash out against anything touching her, but she didn't have the energy to fight him. He braced her with his hands in a way that hurt but felt safe. "I have you."

She shook as he pulled her a little closer. Mike touched his forehead against hers, promising she would be alright. Claire didn't know what to think. She didn't know _how_ to think. She just…felt a lot better letting Mike hold her upright.

* * *

Matt was fine. He had come home without so much as a scrape. That very fact felt _wrong_ when he sat opposite Claire, who was wounded beyond all reason. She tried to comfort him, tried to move the blame away from his damnable shoulders. The smell of copper and tears was too strong, though, mixing horribly with the scent of roses. And the taste of lemon bars. It sprang into his mouth periodically, like his body was afraid he might forget that he had failed the one person he _needed_ to protect.

"You didn't ask me to pull you from that dumpster," she sighed.

"No, you did it because you're a good person," he said. "And you almost got killed, because of me."

He had been fighting that thought all night, trying to fend off the heart-rending blows it dealt him. _No one_ should have been hurt because of him, much less his soulmate. _If_ she was his soulmate. The thought seemed too perverse and tragic to be real at the moment, no matter what the roses and lemon bars said.

What was the _point_ in all of it, if he was just fanning the fire? Why did he bother beating back the filth of the city when nothing good ever seemed to come of it? People said that it was always darkest before dawn, but that didn't mean shit to a blind person. And from where he stood, the casualties caused far outweighed the end result. He _could not_ justify what he was doing if good people were getting hurt.

But Claire didn't believe that. She pressed his hand to her heart, holding it there when he wanted to pull back from the horror and fear it conveyed. He felt like a liar. There was no way he had been honest with her if she _still_ believed what he did was worthwhile.

"You can do something about it. For _all_ of us, Mike."

Matt blinked a couple of times. She held his hand tight, trying to make him believe. He hated hearing that name on her lips. He had thought it funny, at first, a stranger somehow stumbling onto his middle name, but now it just emphasized everything wrong with the situation. How could she put her life and her faith in the hands of a man whose name she didn't even know?

"Matthew," he whispered.

He needed her to know. She had unmasked him the first time they met, but now he truly felt exposed. There was no point to keep pretending that ignorance would protect her. Not when she was coated in the sourness of lemon bars by mere association with him. And Matt needed her to know in case...somehow, maybe, on the off chance that she really was his soulmate.

"My name is Matthew."

Claire didn't say anything. But she didn't pull away, either.

The night was slow to pass. Or, at least, what was left of it. Matt kept playing the night over in his head. Terror over almost losing Claire kept splashing up in his chest, ugly dread filling him at the thought of his (maybe) soulmate dying. They had been lucky, lucky beyond words. Things could have ended so very badly.

He laid on the couch, painfully aware of Claire sleeping in his bed. He closed his eyes. He had work in the morning. Matt tried using his old trick of creating order from chaos, sorting through car horns and radios and truck engines. It didn't keep him from thinking. It didn't drown out Claire's soft sounds of pain as she rolled over.

He had saved Claire. But she shouldn't have even been in danger in the first place. He was a walking disaster zone; everyone around him either died, was hurt, or left. But he was making a difference. Like Claire said, every person he saved was worth all the effort. But the people he caused to suffer, like the little boy that had been kidnapped, or Claire…

He let out a sigh, attention fluttering back to her. She was asleep, barely, a towel laid down between her and the sheets in case the cuts on her back reopened. Things were so beyond his control. He had a stranger in his bed and he had almost gotten her killed. Matt hardly knew Claire, but he felt in his bones that he would hand her the world if she asked. It was the only form of apology he knew how to make, and if it made her happy, if it confirmed her casual flirting, maybe even validated his tentative belief of being soulmates…

No, he was running away with himself. But he would still give her the world.

When Matt had been in college, he'd met Elektra. She had been lightning in a world of gentle rain, kicking down his doors and demanding he give himself over to her. Being around her wasn't like spending time with his father or Foggy. Elektra didn't know everything about him, couldn't guess at the inner mechanics of his soul. She brought out a different part of him, a bolder part, a part that said he could and would do anything.

He'd always wondered if that was what love was supposed to feel like, if soulmates were supposed to make you feel like a different person. So he'd asked her, were they soulmates? She had let out a tiny laugh of surprise, her fingers stalling in their lazy exploration of his hip.

" _Soulmates_?" Elektra tried the word out like it was a new taste on her tongue. "No, no I don't think we are."

He had swallowed hard. Wrong again. There wouldn't be a third time to make the mistake, that he promised himself (because he knew he never needed anyone but her, not because he couldn't bear the disappointment yet again).

"And yet you're still here with me?" he'd asked.

She had turned to look at him, her jaw pressing uncomfortably into his shoulder.

"Do we _have_ to be soulmates to be together?" she had asked, and it genuinely sounded like she was giving him a choice.

Of course he had said no, of course he'd thought they would be together until the world ended (which they weren't, _thankfully_ ). But it had buried a seed that made him wonder what having a soulmate would feel like.

Claire was (he was pretty sure, if he was being brutally honest), and she didn't feel like an extension of himself. She also didn't make him feel completely different. He just felt like Matt, but with a devastating need to keep her happy and healthy. And he was trying, he was trying harder than he ever thought he could. But if he was wrong…

Matt opened his eyes. The bitter taste of cranberry juice filled his mouth as his eyes found the ceiling. He closed them again.

Even if he was wrong, he would keep fighting for her. She deserved his help after all she'd been through, at the very least.

In the morning, he made Claire eggs and toast. Helping her was good, helping her made the daffodil smell of the jam and the alfalfa taste of the skillet make sense. Being around her made things feel _alright._ It was so easy to tend to the cuts on her back, almost natural to describe how his world was on fire, necessary to tell her that she needed to stay with him (there was so much more truth to that than she would ever know).

Claire shifted, her pulse going a little faster. She understood the implications of his statement, all ten thousand of them. He touched his hand to her chin, thumb skimming the cut on her lip. Roses and lemons and copper, all mixing together to make a heartbreaking picture of Claire. A heartbreaking, heart-filling picture of Claire. He didn't deserve her. But he had her, somehow.

Matt kissed Claire, his breath stuttering when the real taste of her blood fought off the lemons. He swallowed, barely letting himself think when she kissed back. He kissed her again, this time avoiding the cut on her bottom lip. He opened his eyes just enough to let roses wash over him, sweet and honest and everything he needed.

Matt leaned back. He knew in his soul that he could not lose her.

* * *

Claire got dressed in the clothes Matt brought her on his lunch break. They were quiet, shy after that morning. Claire wasn't sure if she wanted to burst into giddy laughter or amazed tears. They'd been dancing around this for an eternity (since they had first met, if she was going to be boring and traditional about this), each late night visit and set of stitches and dose of pain killers adding decades to their relationship. Kissing him hadn't exactly been on the forefront of her mind, but now that she had actually done it...it felt weirdly right.

(or maybe that was just the post-kiss jitters.)

She still didn't tell him they were soulmates. It was probably selfish and a little cruel, but Claire wanted (needed) to know without a doubt, in her _bones_ , that they cared about each other beyond the world saying 'that is what soulmates do'. It had only been a day, but she felt pretty certain. Matt had kissed her without her ever having to say a word, the touch of his lips careful and sweet and honest in a way she had never dreamed.

Matt had also taken the liberty of dropping off her phone ( _how_ he managed to snag it from what was likely a crime scene, she didn't even want to guess) with her clothes, so she gave Santino a quick call. He was panicky after he heard her voice, the words coming out in fast spurts between his relieved tears. Claire's chest tightened as she remembered Matt's brief description of what had happened to the boy, but she shook it off and used her nurse voice to reassure him. She kept replaying her words to him after she had hung up.

 _It's fine, it's fine, we're gonna be okay._

The crazy thing was, even after having been kidnapped and beaten by gangsters, Claire believed it. She knew it was still dangerous and that they needed to be careful, but she trusted Matt to always be there for her. She spent another day at his apartment, the two of them working around each other like they had always been together. They would probably face some teething pains now that she was entering into a relationship with a crime fighter, but they had found their feet.

That proved more than a little false when Matt returned after hitting the streets and handed her a phone he had stolen from a policeman. Claire's chest tightened yet again as she sat in his dark, soft grey apartment, not sure what to do. Claire was staring down something inside of Matt that was _ugly,_ gnarled and black, black, black. She had seen glimpses of it on the roof of her apartment, but had never stared it head on.

"Wait, what're you going to do?" she asked. She spread her hands out in an easy, reassuring gesture, like maybe she could push him to the floor and keep him from running off and doing something insane.

"Whatever it takes." He made it sound so simple, a simple declaration and easy execution (claire hoped to god that wasn't the case). But Claire saw the anger in him, clear as she could now see the faint blue light coming through the window.

She didn't know what he was going to do. _He_ probably didn't even know what he was going to do, that was what scared the hell out of her. And Claire had no idea how to fix this, how to stop whatever madness Matt was about to launch himself into. But she knew that it was her responsibility to talk him down, as his soulmate, as the person responsible for his physical wellbeing, as the only damn person in the room.

He didn't want to be talked down. His voice turned sharp, wild in a way that had never been used on her before. He sounded annoyed at her for wasting time, for trying to keep him from exterminating the Russians from Hell's Kitchen. Oh no, no no no. This was _not_ what she had signed up for.

And yet, it exactly was. She had known he was dangerous the first time they'd met, from her apartment all the way to the roof. She had known he was insane in his daring and bull-headed insistence to make things right. Claire had just managed to forget between the quiet stitches and the soft flirting and the broken apologies over her getting hurt.

 _That_ was why she had not told Matt Murdock they were soulmates. It was because the hellfire in his blood scared the absolute sin out of her.

"What you do is important to _so_ many people, I get that," she said.

Claire could see every muscle tick on his face. A moment ago he had been panting from anger, from the need to go out and make a bloody, wrathful difference. Now he was drawing himself together and pulling himself back, constructing a wall between them in case she said the exact thing he did not want to hear.

She clenched her teeth. This was the last thing she had, the last weapon in her arsenal. She didn't know how to beg Matt to not go on rampage and stay with her, she wasn't that kind of person and she didn't _actually_ know him well enough to guess if that would work. But she tried. Someone looking down had to realize it counted for something.

"I just don't think I can let myself fall in love with someone who's…" _Dangerous. Ruthless. Careless. Conflicted. Beyond reason._ "…so damn close to becoming what he hates."

"You're right," he said.

For half a beautiful second, Claire thought he might see sense, that caution might slowly be washing over him the way colors had done for her.

"You shouldn't."

Claire sucked in a breath. He could be so soft when he wanted to, she had always known that. But not like this. Not when he was gently pushing her off a cliff.

Matt climbed the steps to the roof, pulling the mask over his face. She couldn't let him go, not like this, she had to call him back, had to say _something_ to make him stay—

"I can see color!" she burst out, jerking toward the stairs like she might run up and physically hold him back.

Matt froze in the doorway, shoulders tense. She swallowed, trying to breathe as the world whooshed around her and she thought she might cease to exist.

"I—I can see color, Matt. I first saw it when I met you, you're the reason. You're my soulmate. Stay, Matt, please. _Please_ _,_ don't do this. Don't let things go like this."

He hesitated for a moment, then disappeared.

Claire pressed her hands to her mouth. She'd known plenty of heartache before, it was practically a requisite to being achromic. But this, seeing him storm off on a suicide mission for either the body or the soul, it felt like a knife had been sunk into her chest.

She left his apartment when the explosions started. She knew it was crazy and she knew it was dangerous, but people out there were hurt and dammit, she would rather climb through fire than sit at home and watch the city burn.

(even if the flames had been made by matt.)

(especially if the flames had been made by matt. she didn't exactly know the parameters of being a soulmate, but claire knew it was her _job_ to fix his messes, even if she couldn't fix him.)

When Matt called her, a part of her hoped it was him calling from some rooftop, terrified for her safety and needing to check in. A part of her hoped he was calling to say he was at home, he was hurt, he hadn't done anything insane. She honestly would have been fine if he had called to apologize, a strange, twisted confessional after destroying half the city.

But instead he asked for help. He wanted her to help save the asshole that had her kidnapped and tortured. When she tried to segue into their last conversation, when she tried to let him know that her comment at the apartment wasn't some sort of vilification of _him_ , he cut her off. He flirted with her over the phone. He thanked her for her help. He hung up on her.

Claire went back to work. She stemmed bleeding and applied stitches and administered pain medication and tried not think about the agony in her own chest. The news kept her abreast of the nightmare in the city, each pixel its own mocking shade of pain. When the screens spewed reports of the masked man shooting down police and civilians, Claire shoved herself into the stairwell. She wasn't thinking, she was barely breathing. She was drowning in the shit show that had become her life, wondering and doubting and fearing that Matt had finally tipped over the edge.

Hearing that he hadn't done it was a momentary relief. Hearing that she was right, that he was sorry, that he didn't want her caught up in the devil in his soul, it all burned that relief right out of her. She actually felt sick when she heard the tears in his voice.

"You take care of yourself," he said, and it was the most wretched ' _I love you'_ she had ever been given.

She went back to the ER. Nothing mad sense. She ordered one of the other nurses to hand her the pill bottle with the green lid. She realized she had given herself away.

His look of joy felt wrong when it was surrounded by death and chaos.

"Claire, that's wonderful. We need some good news after all of this."

She forced out a smile and kept working. It didn't feel like good news. It felt like a damn tragedy.

Matt left a voicemail a little later. She was back in her own apartment, trying to sort out what the hell she was supposed to do with the mess in her apartment and the mess in her heart.

" _Hey, Claire. I'm alright. Vladimir is dead. I hope you're alright."_

Claire threw her phone across the room, then sat down and cried.


	4. four

_AN Thank you once more to everyone who has read this. It's been a wonderful journey for me, and I've loved exploring Matt and Claire as a unit and as separate parts._

* * *

Somehow, it made sense that everything Matt attempted didn't work. No matter what, every tenuous, intangible, _damned thing_ he tried fell apart. He couldn't keep Claire safe. He couldn't get information out of Vladimir. He couldn't stop Foggy and Karen from pursuing Fisk on their own. He couldn't love Claire like he wanted to, like he was supposed to, like he needed to.

It was a sick pleasure to go out onto the streets and beat the teeth out of criminals until they confessed names, locations, details about the insidious empire Fisk had built. For a few brief, disgusting hours, he could forget that he was Matthew Murdock, the living catastrophe. He could just be wrath and vengeance and devastation.

Then he came home. And he took off his mask. And he tasted lemons as he tended his cut hands. And he heard a thousand Bible verses condemning his actions in his head. And he didn't smell roses.

He missed Claire. He wanted to call her, to apologize, to ask for help, to beg for forgiveness, but he didn't know how. Matt had managed to trick himself for a few shining seconds that maybe it was okay for him to have a soulmate. Now he had to live with the fact that it was inevitable to disappoint her.

When Stick showed up, Matt half-hoped that he would forget his changed philosophy of the last twenty or so years and default back to Stick's. The only thing that mattered was a _purpose;_ fighting the good fight was all Matt needed to exist. He didn't. Instead, Stick's perverse reality grated through Matt's mind, leaving bloody tatters in its wake (it didn't help that absolutely _everything_ about stick would have repulsed claire).

After the man left Matt's life in even bigger shambles, Matt still longed for the stern, steady love that Claire freely gave. If it had been love. It might have just been beleaguered obligation to tend after her burden of a soulmate.

Matt asked Father Lantom over lattes what the divine purpose of a soulmate was. Lantom chuckled and mused that maybe God felt everyone needed a moving buddy to make their way through life. He sobered when Matt asked if maybe soulmates were just another form of temptation and trial.

Lantom shifted in his seat, thinking what to say. He knew Matt had found his soulmate. He always knew what Matt didn't say.

"Matthew…many of the things God gives us and allows us to experience are not strictly one thing or another. Often, it depends on what we do with it. Trial and temptation…that depends on what the person does with them."

Matt forced out a laugh. It was a nice thought, but he knew the truth. He was a trial in Claire's life, she had told him as much herself.

 _I don't think I can let myself love someone so damn close to becoming what he hates._

There was no question of suffering there. But at least Matt had resisted his own selfish temptation enough to set her free.

Matt had been certain he could sink no lower, that he could not hurt the people around him more than he already had. Of course he was wrong. Lying on his couch and having Foggy stab him with accusations was a more terrible hurt than anything he had ever experienced.

He had thought he was right to keep the truth from Foggy, for hiding his abilities and vigilantism and _rage_. But sitting there and listening to Foggy ask if he was really blind, that stung. Sitting there and being asked if he had blown up the city he loved, that carved out a bit of Matt's very soul.

It was probably a good thing Foggy wasn't Matt's soulmate. They both would have died from the pain of it.

Then again, if he _had_ been Matt's soulmate, maybe Matt wouldn't have kept up the lie. Maybe Matt had been holding himself back because he knew there was no assurance that Foggy would accept him without question ( _then again_ , claire was his soulmate and she very much did _not_ accept him without question).

(both thoughts made him sick.)

When Foggy asked what else, what _else_ had Matt been hiding, he made himself speak.

"I…found my soulmate," he whispered, a tortured confession that was kind of a lie in itself, because he couldn't name Claire. Not like this. Not when he had failed her and she so rightly rejected him.

Foggy's choked laugh was a slap. "Yeah? That's what we've come to, that's where we're at? You can't even tell me when you find your damn _soulmate_?"

"Foggy—it's not like that, I'm not trying to _keep_ this from you—"

"How did you even find them, anyway? How, between your suicidal, insane tendencies and _not being able to see?!"_

"I—it's strange, I don't really—"

"How much stranger can you _get,_ Matt?!"

"I— _taste_ things. Colors. Sometimes I smell them, it depends," he whispered. He was keenly aware that this sounded ridiculous to a man that had been able to see color all his life. What a farce Matt was, a mockery of everything decent in the world. "I didn't realize at first, I just started to figure it out a little while ago. I don't even know how… It's not like she's in my life anymore. I kinda messed that up."

Foggy gave a hard laugh that said things weren't very funny. Matt dragged in a hitched breath, fingers picking at his sweatshirt pocket.

Everything was so _wrong._ He believed with his whole heart that God would only give His children the afflictions they could bear and the blessings they earned, but none of that made sense when Matt smelted every one of his blessings _into_ an affliction.

"Damn you," Foggy said, voice a tight whisper. " _Damn_ you, Matt. I should be _happy_ for you right now, but you've taken that away from me."

Matt closed his eyes. He wished he could simply stop caring, if only to stop the hurt.

* * *

Matt's voice was small when he asked her to come over. He sounded exhausted and beat to pieces. Not just physically, which he was (matt's friend's frantic explanation had terrified her, but actually _seeing_ matt gutted claire completely. it took every bit of her training not to burst into tears as she stitched cut after cut after cut and wondered ' _why me, why do i still care?'_ ). It sounded like his indomitable will had been broken somehow, cracked and crumbled until his bones were dust and his hope ashes.

She had to take a few minutes after the call, leaning against her counter as she fought back tears. This was so, so wrong. Damn her and damn him for putting both of them through this shit.

But she put on her big girl panties and went, because it had been months and he needed help. Never mind that she had never tried to call him back, never mind that she had scraped and scanned the news for sign of him after the bombings, never mind that she sat up late at night, worried sick that he was hurt and hopeful he would finally bend enough to march to her door (or stumble through her window).

For most of the visit, she managed to keep it together. She kept herself casual, sarcastic, calm. She didn't throw her arms around his neck and hug him until neither one of them could breathe, she didn't point her finger in his face and chew him out because he was a cocky, irritating little shit that needed to figure out that people cared for him. She kept it together. She was fine.

Even when he offered her a drink, her voice didn't turn too hard. Even when he asked if she was leaving the city, she didn't get too defensive.

But her heart _did_ break a little when he tried to hide how much he didn't want her to leave. Was it possible for Matt Murdock to _not_ feel the need to always appear strong?

So Claire did the reasonable thing. She didn't yell, she didn't break into tears, she didn't list off every brand new agonizing, amazing, astonishing, abominable color he made her see. She didn't explain that loving him without knowing all of him (if he was okay, if he knew how to treat himself kindly, if he would ever place his own needs before his guilt and the needs of the city) was its own form of pain. She didn't tell him that she refused to water this relationship with his blood. She didn't tell him that she refused to water this relationship with her tears.

He didn't want to hear any of it, wrapped up in his own head as he was.

"Come on, what'd you expect, Claire? You made it pretty clear you didn't want to move forward with…whatever this was," he sighed. She thought it was kind of funny, how easily he could move blame from being entirely on his shoulders to off to on again.

"You _know_ what it was, what it could have been," she said. It wasn't because it was her _job_ as his soulmate to keep him in check, but because he needed _someone_ to talk sense into him. He needed someone to at least try.

"If I _stopped,_ " he said, the beginnings of a well practiced protest on his lips.

"That doesn't stop us from being soulmates, Matt."

He leaned back, silently resisting every word she said. Claire sucked in a breath. She didn't want to do this. She had _never_ wanted to untangle the excruciating nuances of soulmates, especially not ones that were romantic. If it were a normal relationship, maybe it would have been easier. Maybe they would naturally drift away and be just fine (doubtful, but she could hope). But Claire knew this needed fixing and she also knew she would never be ready for it. And neither would Matt.

He hated hearing that Hell's Kitchen would never be safe. She saw it in the way he worked his jaw and twitched his head and clenched his fingers. He hated hearing that he would never be _enough._ And she understood that, she really did. That was why she didn't give in to pointless anger, that was why she sat close and personal and told him all of this as honestly as she could. The world had gone mad, lately, and if she had had the abilities he did...there was a chance she might have preferred nearly dying every other day to ignoring the fact that she could help.

"I'm sorry you got pulled into this," he whispered, face tired and open and more heartfelt than she could believe. "You…you deserve better. I'm too much suffering for anyone to be stuck with."

Claire watched him for a long moment, heart in her throat. If she could just love him _enough,_ maybe some of her care would transfer into him. If she showered him with praise and thanks and adoration, maybe Matt would believe he was worth loving. It might be better than silence and blood and stitches.

But that wasn't really an answer, either. Claire knew she could not, _would not_ throw her whole being into a man that gave so little back. She loved Matt, soulmate or not, damaged or not, but committing to anything deeper than an ally would drain her dry. It wasn't healthy to give and give and never receive. But she refused to abandon him, as well.

"Well, what're we going to do, then?" she asked. He tilted his head up as though trying to fight the hope in his chest. "Like it or not, we're soulmates."

"I never said I didn't like you being my soulmate."

"I know."

They sat in silence, both their minds stumbling over themselves.

"I don't…it would be _unfair_ to expect you to…" Matt let out a shuddery breath, face tightening as he geared up for whatever sacrificial thing he wanted to say.

"What would be _unfair_ is to give up before we ever really get started," Claire told him.

He frowned, expression crumpling ever so slightly. Claire smiled and sighed, then kissed his forehead as she stood up.

"Thank you, Claire. I know I keep saying it and it probably doesn't mean anything at this point, but…"

"I"ll always be there, when you really need me," Claire promised, knowing he could hear the truth of it in her pulse. She walked to the door, still speaking. "You're not rid of me, yet. It'll take some doing, but we'll figure it out. I won't let you turn into someone like the martyrs, the saints, the saviors. The all end up the same way. Bloody and alone."

"I never said I was any of those," he said, hope and confusion and _I could never be as good as they are_ all over his face.

"You didn't have to." Claire smiled. She hoped he could hear the love in her words, underneath the exhaustion, frustration, and pain.

Claire looked him over. She couldn't say if she wished she hadn't met him. She couldn't say if she wished her life was normal and boring and so much simpler. She couldn't say if she wished she couldn't distinguish the pale cream of his face, the coffee grounds of his scruff, the rusty dahlia red of his wounds.

She couldn't say it because every word would have been a lie.

"Stay safe, Matt. I need you whole for when I come back and we tussle this out."

"Okay," he whispered. "Stay safe."


End file.
